


Constantly on the Cusp

by shiftylinguini



Category: BBC Radio 1 RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Anal Fingering, M/M, Mild Hand Kink, Morning Sex, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 04:15:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14300580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiftylinguini/pseuds/shiftylinguini
Summary: It’s 5 in the morning, and Nick’s got an alarm going off, an unexpected bed full of pop star, and a nation to wake up.It’s far too fucking early for this.





	Constantly on the Cusp

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Writcraft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Writcraft/gifts).



> For Writcraft, who prompted: "Tomlinshaw + adidas + the words "too fucking early" please!!" 
> 
> Title from 'Do I Wanna Know' by Arctic Monkeys, because of course. Big ups to jiksa and silveredglass for the cheerleading/listening to me moan, and to bix for being fab even though she is not in this fandom <3
> 
> Disclaimer: All of this extremely did not happen (but dandelion tea is gross).

-

When Nick’s alarm goes off, for a full minute it feels like a normal morning. 

It’s early, because it always is, and the room is dark. Even if it weren’t not-even-five am, Nick’s curtains would block out the sun, rising or otherwise. They’re good like that, proper thick and all. Nick loves his curtains, thinks for a moment how strange it is that this is his normal now; curtains as thick as arctic ice and alarms blaring at arse o'clock in the morning. Normal, normal, normal. Nick stretches, arms above his head and face scrunched as he tries to pull his legs out into the perfect position to crick his back, just like ― 

Nick jolts when a hand clumsily slides up his chest and then slaps him, _hard_ , right above his heart. 

Nick blinks, then scrunches his face so he can stare down at the fingers on his chest. They’re short and slim, nails bitten and ‘28’ scrawled across middle and ring, and ohhhh, right. Okay. That. 

“Fuckin’ turnirroff,” Louis slurs, thick and drowsy, and Nick clicks his alarm off, moving in a kind of autopilot while the rest of him feels sluggish and dim. He can feel Louis relax back into the bed as the room falls silent. 

Nick rubs the sleep out of his eyes, tries to rub it out of his brain too so that he can make proper sense of this. At least he knows who the offending limb belongs to, along with the offending sweary mouth currently attached to a lovely face, which is smooshed into Nick’s pillow. And drooling a bit. Still lovely though, pillow creases and all, and Nick knows he didn’t go to bed alone last night, he remembers that much, but he is really, really not used to waking up to this particular company. 

Louis never bloody stays the night. He’s a proper arsehole about it, and everything. 

Nick has two very simple rules: don’t shag people when you have to get up for work, i.e. keep it in your pants until the weekend, Grimshaw, you tart, and don’t shag stroppy pop stars who sort of hate you and have the perpetual manners of a bear with toothache and an entire fucking bramble bush shoved up their arse. They’re simple rules, albeit a bit specific, but they get the job done. 

Nick’s been breaking both of those rules for Louis for quite some time now. He thinks he’s done it enough for there to be some kind of amendment on the rules list, the Louis Clause, section 42.B. ‘No shagging cranky bear-tempered singers, unless aforementioned arse-full-of-brambles is fucking magnificent’ or ‘No getting off with closeted boybanders unless their general cuntiness towards you is a) a massive turn on or b) counteracted by how good they are with their mouth’. Nick thinks all of those might apply to Louis. He can be a massive cunt. He’s _so_ fucking fit. 

Nick’s chest is still stinging vaguely from where Louis slapped it. 

“Morninggg,” Nick chirps, wincing at his volume and the fact he’s weirdly defaulted to using his radio voice. It's just taking a minute to get a handle on waking up next to Louis. This is not part of the routine; they meet, they fuck, then Louis wipes up and skives off as fast as he can. Nick usually has time then to watch a few reruns of Nigella and to contemplate googling ‘ _am I being used for sex?_ ” and _‘is it okay that I don’t mind that?_ ” before he drags himself to bed and doesn't think about what Louis’s bedroom might look like and if he’s a PJs man, or more of a vest and pants kind of bloke. 

Once, Louis stayed until Nick fell asleep, his arm almost touching Nick’s back and his bare knee pointy but warm against Nick’s thigh. He was gone when Nick woke up, though, despite it being a Sunday and a day they could have had a lie-in, not that Nick’s thought about that, but of course he fucking has. He got an empty bed instead, and a determination to not feel bad about that. The effort it took was fucking _exhausting_ , and so was the pep talk Nick gave himself about putting a stop to this, all ‘not again, Grimshaw, come on’, and how this was the very, very last time, because he was getting far too old for this kind of crap. 

(He lasted four days. Louis blew him in a pub loo, quick and messy and way too efficiently for someone who apparently didn’t go around doing this kind of thing. When he kissed Nick after, he tasted salty, like Nick and like the chips he was eating before he followed Nick into the bathroom, and Nick tangled his fingers in Louis’s hair and made a right mess of it, just because he could.)

That was three months ago. Last night was fun, because it’s always fun, and a test on Nick’s bed frame, but honestly, what is Louis still doing here? He should have turned into a pumpkin and fucked off hours ago. Nick rolls onto his side, Louis’s slack hand falling off his chest and onto the bed between them. 

“Morning, Louis,” he rumbles again, close to Louis’s ear this time. 

Louis groans like he’s dying. “No.” 

The creases on Louis’s cheek from the pillow are soft, wonky indents. Nick wants to touch them. He stretches one finger out, almost long enough to reach, and then taps it on the pillow instead. 

“No, it’s not morning, or no ―”

“Jesus,” Louis murmurs, or Nick thinks he does. It could also be ‘cheeses’ or ‘belize’, indicating Louis woke up in a bit of a dairy mood or he fancies a holiday. It’s hard to tell when Louis seems to be talking with half a pillow in his mouth, the sound of which is sort of doing things to Nick’s dick. 

“What time d’you call this?” Louis slurs, as if he isn’t intimately aware that Nick is a bloody breakfast show host and breakfast is, y’know, usually a morning kind of affair. “Alarms going off, fuck’s sake. What is this.” 

There’s a rustle of sheets, Louis’s face pressing deeper into the pillow and his voice trailing off into the rhetorical nowhere where the answer to his question lies. 

Nick makes a face. He isn’t really sure what this is, either. A massive hallucination, maybe. Some kind of very vivid and a bit crap dream, in which Nick has conjured his own alarm to haunt him in his sleep before he gets to wake up and be haunted by his _actual_ alarm all over again. Louis sounds tired, and cranky in a not-quite-awake way. Makes sense that his default setting in the morning would be scruffy and pissed off and not lifting his head off the pillow for anyone, mate. Louis’s never struck Nick as a morning person, and he’s 100% never actually struck Nick with his presence in the morning. 

Nick would really like to know why that is. Why Louis has hasn’t done his usual disappearing act post-shag. Nick is a fan of waking up to a bed full of whoever he got off with the night before, as a general rule, but Louis’s more of a come-and-run approach. As in, he comes to Nick’s, comes _on_ Nick, and then runs off into the night to do whatever it is the emotionally repressed do of an evening. (Nick would like to pretend he doesn't know what that is, but he does; it’s mope and watch telly and sometimes get flustered over things that happened between the ages of 12 and 16). 

So really, Nick needs to ask Louis why he’s here. Did he forget his key, or maybe develop a sudden bout of post-cock narcolepsy? Was Nick’s bed just too comfy and his hair just the right level of styled to help Louis finally get over the ten million hurdles involved in getting him anything close to intimacy? Nick has questions, and a show to get ready for. He’s just gonna ask them and get on with it. 

Instead, what he actually says is, “I need to go, love.” 

The words come out soft, almost sweet, and Louis sounds almost all the way asleep again when he replies. 

“‘Kay.”

Right, so Nick is clearly a bit crap at the whole getting-on-with it side of things. 

He presses a finger into Louis’s shoulder, just under a red, mouth-shaped mark that Nick doesn’t recall putting there but feels vaguely proud of all the same. Louis’s not wearing a t-shirt, one arm up and under the pillow, and his skin is bed-warm, almost too hot. Nick can’t remember what top Louis was wearing when he turned up last night, something grey and black and Adidas-y most like, to match those bloody awful trainers that probably cost as much as Nick’s flat. He’s got his joggers back on, though, must have got that far before he fell asleep. Nick’s not likely to forget them; they're mustard, and fleecy, and violently ugly. They even had a bloody stain on them. 

Louis was definitely not wearing them when Nick was done with him (Nick made a big deal about getting the stupid trackies off and out of his sight, which made Louis smirk like he’d invented it) which means there’s a good chance Louis is not wearing any ― Nick cranes his head and looks over the side of the bed. Yep, there they are. Pants which are not Nick’s, on Nick’s bedroom floor. Which means Louis is definitely not wearing anything under the world’s grossest trackies. 

That really shouldn’t be as hot as it is. There might be something wrong with Nick for getting a bit hard over that. And erections aside, he needs to get a wriggle on; he’s going to be bloody late, and he’s not sure ‘soz, was gazing wistfully at one fifth (well, one fourth now really) of One Direction while they drooled on my pillow’ is going to really cut it as a justification ― and it’s not even gonna be the member of the band everyone’ll assume it was. 

He puts his hand on Louis’s back, bites his lip when Louis stirs but doesn’t shift away. “Right, I’m on a schedule love, so you planning on staying here then?”

“‘Kay.”

Nick walks his fingers up Louis’s spine, twists his lips to the side. “Sooo, you gonna go back to sleep?”

Louis hums. It’s not really an answer, but his hips shift against the bed, and Nick is getting ideas. They’re good ones. Or bad ones. They’re excellent bad ideas. 

He knows he’s got bugger all time left (and that’s if he dry shampoos it, wears yesterday's jeans, gets breakie out of the vending machine at work) but he would like to not waste this rare opportunity of getting this Louis, all sleepy, and warm, and about a hundred times less prickly than usual. De-barbed, Nick thinks, then wrinkles his nose. Jesus. What does that even mean. Best save the epithets until after coffee, for everyone’s sake. 

“Are you ―” Nick licks his lips, runs his fingers across the hem of Louis’s joggers. He’s not sure what he’s about to ask. _Are you in need of a cup of tea? ‘cos I’m feeling generous and I can put the kettle on for you, even though you whinge like hell about how I never do it right_ , or _Are you okay with me copping a bit of a feel while you’re here, because this is all a bit bloody novel, plus your trackies look cheap and expensive at the same time and I think I love the way they feel on you._

“Are y’awake, love?” he settles on, feeling a bit bold and leaning forwards to kiss the jut of Louis’s shoulder. “I have to go to work. Like, really. Very important person, me.”

Nick spreads his fingers on the small of Louis’s back, listening to his slow breathing. 

“Y’eh.” Louis sniffs, then sighs out heavily. “Very important wanker, you. S’not news to me.”

Ah. Awake then. Nick smiles. “Wanker, is it.” He slips his hand further around Louis’s hip, fingers skidding over the hem of his joggers. “I could be, if you like.” Christ, what a line. Maybe Louis should go back to sleep, if this is Nick’s morning game. _I could be a wanker if you’ve got a penis, baby_. That’s not even worth being embarrassed over, Nick should just skip ahead and put himself straight in the bin. 

Louis makes a noise, something between a laugh and a yawn. It could even be a scoff. Nick can’t tell and anyway he has about twenty-three minutes before he really, really needs to be out of here. He’ll debate what Louis’s noises are and what they mean on the car on the way in. 

“S’that you offerein’ to wank me?” Louis sounds marginally more alert. “What time s’it really?”

“Early.” Nick kisses his shoulder again. He’s not brave enough to tell Louis what time it actually is. Joan of bloody Arc wouldn't be, Nick would wager. “Go back to sleep if you like.”

“Mm.’ Louis rubs his face against the pillow, stretches his arms out under it. “Could go back to sleep.” It’s almost easy to miss, the way he pushes back against Nick’s hand resting on his lower back. The second time he does it, though, Nick can’t mistake it. “You’ve got me up now, though.”

“Have I?” Nick slips his fingertips under the hem of his joggers, lets them skim over the top of his arse cheek. 

“You best do something about it, too.”

Nick squeezes, inching his hand lower. Louis’s got a great arse, and he puffs out a breath when Nick squeezes it again, letting his smallest finger dip between his cheeks. “Have to be quick. That all right, love?

Louis breathes out again, almost a whine this time. “Jesus, then stop asking questions and just fucking _do_ something, yeah?” 

Nick quickly fumbles with his phone, setting an alarm for exactly 15 minutes time, and does just that. 

It's weird, trying to get someone off on a time limit, and at the same time it’s not weird at all. It's not hard either, if the way Louis is grinding down against the mattress and then up against Nick’s hands as he pulls his joggers down and spreads his arse cheeks apart is anything to go by. 

“What do you want?” Nick murmurs against Louis’s neck, around a mouthful of sweat-damp hair. He doesn’t bother brushing it away, one hand slipping under Louis to palm his dick and the other pressing his thumb against Louis’s hole. 

Louis snorts. It’d sound a lot more derisive if it didn’t also sound so breathless. “This is your party, mate.”

Right. Nick sits up on his knees, whacking his wrist on the side of the bedside table (“fucking, _ow_ , shut up, Lewis, that’s not funny”) as he rummages in the drawer for the lube. It’s cool and slippery against his fingers before he pops the cap shut again, then drops the tube on the small of Louis’s back with a little more force than is necessary. 

Louis grunts in surprise. “Mature, Grimshaw,” he says, laughing until he suddenly isn’t as Nick presses his finger inside him. 

“Shut it, you,” Nick mutters, batting the lube onto the floor (it was immature, whatever, Louis deserved it) and easing his finger in deeper. He fits a second finger next to it almost immediately ― two’s all he’ll need for this, he reckons ― and there’s a little resistance, but not much. Louis’d shout if he was bothered, Nick knows that much, and besides, he’s never really been one for gentle. 

Nick glances at his phone ― 13 minutes ― then leans a little closer to where Louis’s breathing hard against the pillow. 

“Louis,” Nick lets his lips brush around the shell of Louis’s ear, feels the catch of his hair against them. “You don’t actually have to be quiet.”

“Piss off, I was savouring the mo ― oh, fuck.” Louis arches into him as Nick starts to move his fingers properly, and that's just the hottest fucking thing Nick’s ever seen this side of midnight. It always is. 

“Here love, lift up.” Nick grabs a pillow from the top of the bed, slips it under Louis hips. There, something to grind against. Better angle, too. Nick glances at his clock. 11 minutes now, and this is fine. Louis’s easy for it, which should make _no_ sense seeing as everything else about him is so fucking difficult, all spiky angles and unexpected snarls and contrariness that does Nick’s head in. But this, Nick is great at, and Louis is so, so good at letting Nick get him off. 

“There you are.” Nick twists his fingers, sits up a little higher on his knees. “That good?” 

“I said stop asking me fucking quest ― ahh.” 

Nick presses down on the small of Louis’s back, watches it curve. He bites his lip on a smile. “But I like it when you talk,” he says, staring as his fingers dip in, then out again. In to the knuckle, twist, and then back out and Louis's got both hands out on the mattress now, elbows at his sides. _Leverage_ , Nick thinks, and then _smart lad_. Nick kisses the back of Louis’s shoulder, leaning more of his weight on him. 

“Fuck, keep doing that.” Louis grinds down harder. 

“What, this?” Nick leans down on him a little more firmly, feels Louis’s breath stutter. “Or this?” Nick twists his fingers, and Louis keens. 

“Both, shit.” 

“You like that?” Nick swirls his tongue over the line of Louis’s back, sucks a kiss over his ribs. He can taste sweat there, old and new. His mouth waters. 

“Fuck off.” Louis’s hips are working down against the pillow, slow hard grinds that make his thighs clench, his knees press into the mattress. “You know I do. Shit.” 

Nick almost doesn't need to move his fingers, Louis's working back against them hard enough, and yeah. Nick knows how much Louis likes this. He's never really had anyone else get off on his hands like this, on being held down, fingered. Nick's never really got off on _doing_ it to anyone else like this either, bit since Louis, Nick’s been doing his best to give himself fucking RSI because _Jesus bloody fuck_ the sounds Louis makes are worth every twinge Nick’s gonna be feeling for the rest of the day as he fiddles with the dials. If he's honest, that kind of gets him off too. 

Everything about Louis bloody gets him off. 

“You gonna come like this?” Nick bites a the skin over the side of Louis’s ribs. There’s not a lot there, and he knows Louis is ticklish. 

“Fuck.” 

“Come on, love.” 

Nick presses harder against Louis’s back, his fingers splayed against his skin. There's sweat pooling in the dip of Louis’s spine and on Nick's temples. He has seven minutes. He's so hard it hurts, and Louis’s joggers are around his thighs, hips rocking back and forth fast enough to make the bed creak. He's in Nick's fucking bed, loud and messy and breathing wetly into Nick's pillow, and it's suddenly all too much and exactly enough. 

Nick lifts his hand off Louis’s back, shoving it down his pants with the kind of finesse he had when he was fifteen and just discovered porn. When his body would heat up so fast, the men on the glossy magazine pages so fucking hot Nick couldn't even _think_. 

Nick wants to push Louis’s head down, against the pillow. He wants to bite Louis’s shoulder, his neck, the soft spot on the side of his pec that makes Louis squirm. He wants to flip Louis over and fuck him, to kiss him when he gets loud, and then louder, and then _louder_. He wants to feel the jab of Louis’s knees against his ribs, the kick of his heels against Nick’s thighs. The bite of his smile when he laughs against Nick’s mouth, huffs 'where’s the stamina, old man? Thought you knew how to fuck’ before Louis nearly rips Nick's hair out when Nick fucks him exactly as hard as Louis’s been trying to goad him into doing since they met. 

Sometimes there are marks on Louis’s wrists after that from Nick’s fingers. Sometimes Louis let's Nick kiss them, mouth around them and down his arms, licking from his armpits to his neck until Louis softly mumbles “you're gross" and then pulls Nick in for another round. Sometimes, Louis shoves him off, gets his clothes back on and his feet in his awful, pricey trainers so fast and with so little eye contact Nick thinks he's about leave some money on the dresser and thank Nick for his services. Never has he stayed the night, and never can Nick predict which Louis he will get, and in some fucked up away he loves that. It makes no sense, but he loves all the unpredictable versions of Louis he gets and all of the sarcastic, exciting, sexy as fuck bullshit that comes along with him. Nick wants all of it right fucking now and all at once and one day he might fucking get it, _properly_ , and _fuck_.

Nick’s coming before he can even anticipate it, one hand flying over his cock and his fingers still buried in Louis’s arse. His cock pulses in his fist, come splattering Louis arse, the top of his joggers and Nick stupidly, stupidly, thinks “I got it on your branding” and he can't even laugh at himself because he's ready to keel over. His spine is melting, hot and cold euphoria mixing in his belly and between his legs and he pumps his fist a few more times as he tries reminds himself to breathe. It’s not sexy to have an asthma attack while getting someone off, even if it because you're obsessed with how fit they are and how much you want to kiss their annoying, dickhead mouth. 

Nick's pretty sure Louis and his mouth are too busy gasping into pillow to really notice though, so he might have got away with it. He’s done a pretty lax job of getting Louis off, his hands having gone all shivery and useless with his own orgasm, but he manages to crook his fingers one more time and Louis tenses underneath him, humping down against the pillow. 

“There you are, love,” Nick croons. 

“Shit, shit, _shit_.” Louis spine curves, thighs tensing as he gasps into the pillow, mouth open and teeth catching on the material. He bites down when he comes, moaning through clenched teeth and pressed lips, white knuckling the sheets and Nick pumps his fingers with as much coordination as he can while his cock twitches and his wrist twinges at the same time. 

Of course, that’s when his alarm goes off like the bleating of Satan's arsehole itself.

 

“Oh fucking, _no_ ,” Louis growls into the pillow, drawing his shaky knees up a little and pushing up onto his elbows so he can glare as Nick quickly wipes his hand off and lurches forwards to shut his phone up. 

It’s impressive, how pissed off Louis manages to look, given that he just came all over Nick’s bed and his arse is not only hanging out his trackies but covered in come. Apparently he’s got a real issue with alarms, or maybe just Nick’s. Maybe he’s just mourning his forfeited afterglow; he looks flushed and a bit soft and muddled around the edges still, and he’s breathing a bit like he’s been at the gym. It’s a great look, and while Louis’s still got a good glower on him, it looks a bit half-hearted now. His hair is a fucking riot, sticking up awfully at the front from burying it into the bed while Nick got him off, and the both of them need a shower like the desert needs the rain. They look like shit, the pair of them, dicks out and sweaty and Nick really, really wants to kiss Louis right now. Like, embarrassing amounts of a lot. 

Nick clears his throat then laughs instead as he tucks his cock away, along with thoughts of kissing and annoying feelings, because he’s cutting this so fine. He can’t stand being late for work, why is he doing this? Nick tears his eyes away from Louis’s bare arse. 

“Well, that was lovely,” he says and then, because he’s an idiot, knee walks up to Louis and kisses him on the forehead. Louis looks about as shocked as Nick feels, which is very. But if there’s one thing Nick is good at it’s refusing to acknowledge his feelings (even when they’re bursting out of him in strangely fond and slightly motherly kisses) so he just pats Louis on the head and gets off the bed. 

Louis snorts, sitting up properly, wiggling a bit against the bed and then pulling his joggers up over his arse. Nick stares, then makes an appalled face. 

“You didn’t even ―” Nick flaps a disgusted hand at him, trying to adequately convey _wipe yourself off_. God, Louis is gross. Why is Nick so into it. 

Louis just raises his brows, then smirks. He shrugs. “It’s alright, I’ll change later. What’s a bit of jizz between mates, eh? And really most of it’s ended up on your duvet, I won’t lie.” 

Louis picks his jumper up off the floor, then looks over at Nick when he's got one arm in. He smiles, and it’s not unkind in the slightest. His eyes crinkle, and his collarbones look stark against the dark material of the jumper before they disappear under it. If anything, pulling it on seems to improve Louis’s hair, or at least flatten the mess of it, and Nick’s still standing there just staring like a total pilchard when Louis opens Nick’s top drawer, pulls out a pair of his pants and then walks back. He stops right in front of Nick, then presses the bunched up material against Nick’s bare chest.

Louis's stopped smiling, but his face is still sleepy and soft and _nice_ as he looks up at Nick. Nick’s holding his breath a bit, feeling weirdly expectant about what Louis’s going to say. Louis licks his lips. 

“Don’t you have a job to get to or something?”

Fuck. 

“Right. Yes, shit.” Nick grabs the pants and a towel and storms into the bathroom, barely stopping to let Pig into the back garden ― she’s gonna murder him, he’s given her no attention at all and she’s just getting dry bickies for breakfast ‘cause Nick has woken up with no brain and he’s got like 10 minutes now to get ready and on the doorstep. And he thinks Louis might be leaving. 

Nick forces himself to shut the door and get in the shower rather than turn around and actually ask Louis about that. He figures he’s got two minutes to clean himself off, and get his head on properly, so he grabs the body wash, keeping his upper body angled away from the shower spray. It’s hard, and he knows that his hair is getting damp, but he’s not putting his shower cap on while Louis is potentially in the other room. He’ll just know somehow, and give Nick endless shit about being a nana. Or, he won’t, because he might not even be there anymore. Nick quickly washes his hands, pits, and dick ― the essentials ― then switches to face wash, giving himself a nice moment to scream silently into his hands. What the fuck is he doing. Getting exfoliating beads in his mouth, for one, and for the other ― well. Ugh. 

Nick shuts off the shower, drying himself as fast as possible and pulling on the clean pants (that Louis got him, and bloody Nora Nick is getting soppy over Louis fetching him fucking _pants_ now). He quickly cleans his teeth, trying to open his moisturiser and dab it under his eyes with his ring finger at the same time. It’s a comedy of bad coordination, but he doesn’t end up with toothpaste in his eyeballs so he’s feeling pretty bloody talented, really. 

Nick’s fingers are still a little shaky, his wrist a little sore. He feels great, and really a bit wobbly inside, and why did Louis stay over? Nick wants to make himself believe it was just something banal ― he was lazy, he was tired, he’s turned frugal and didn’t want to spare the cab fare ― but that’s not how things work between them. Besides, Nick knows Louis drove here, because the first thing he did when he arrived, after throwing his crap on Nick’s counter, was complain about how far away he’d had to park. Louis would probably walk over hot coals to avoid doing something that could be considered intimate, or coupley, with Nick, like sleep in the same bed together, and that worked fine for Nick at first. Fuck knows he’s crap enough at boyfriends, ask anyone and they’ll ― well, they’ll say that Nick’s just making up excuses to avoid having to commit to anyone, but whatever, potato-potahto. 

Nick’s not expecting that kind of thing with Louis, but he thinks he might like something a bit more like friendship, a bit more like that nice space in between ‘couple’ and ‘friends’ that Nick’s managed a few times in his life. _What’s a bit of jizz between mates, eh?_ It was a dumb joke, Louis being gross, but something about it rang sincere and Nick does want that. This, but just a little bit closer. A bit of dinner while sat side by side on the sofa sometimes, a regular arm around him in bed, instead of a cold pillow. Nick could handle that. There’s a dumb part of him that wants Louis to want that, too, the part that thinks Louis’s something of a serial monogamist and that Louis’s been banging Nick’s door down an awful lot the last few weeks for someone who doesn’t properly like him. Nick’s having a hard time shutting that awful, optimistic part of himself up this morning. 

Nick dumps his toothbrush back in its home then spits messily in the sink. Cologne on, check, and he can hear Pig whining happily like she does when someone’s petting her. Which, no, Nick’s not thinking about that. Louis _does_ like her, though, in a way that makes Nick’s chest go all tight and fond like emotional heartburn when Louis coos at her. Nick turns back to his hair, rubbing some goop in it fast enough that it’ll probably catch fire soon. Lovely. It looks wonky as all hell, but that’s the best Nick can do, and was that the door going? Jesus. Nick’s heart sinks, his stomach surges. All of his body does what he doesn’t want it to do, so he barrels into the bedroom rather than think any more about any of it, a mantra of _don’t be late, don’t be late, don’t be laaaate_ drowning everything else out. 

The room is empty. Of course it is, Nick knew it would be. He knew Louis was about to bugger off, that this morning was just an aberrant blip in Louis’s usual Nick-shagging schedule, and Nick shouldn't have thought otherwise. 

Still. He did think otherwise, for a minute at least. Nick lets himself feel it, just for a moment, hands hanging at his side and just, ugh, _sad_ about it all ― about himself and that Louis didn’t bother to say goodbye ― before he gives himself a swift mental kick up the arse and keeps getting ready. 

Maybe it’s time for another pep talk, or for Nick to finally chuck Louis and get a proper boyfriend. A nice one, an actual one. Bugger nice evenings on the sofa with Louis, that’s crap and Nick’s an idiot, and it’s not like Nick couldn’t meet someone else and do better. The sex is bloody magnificent, but Nick’s just not got the long-term stamina for this kind of emotional cloak and dagger shit. Nick’s dick’s going to fall off and he’s going to have a nervous breakdown. 

“Just gotta stop being a silly prick,” he tells himself as he pulls his jeans on fast enough to almost do a number on his leg hair, and shrug a decent shirt on, a nice pair of boots and a good jacket. See, he’s a catch, even when he’s in a rush. Sod Louis, his loss. Nick makes a face at his reflection ― God, he’s already pep talking himself, bloody hell ― then grabs his phone and grumpily tramps into his kitchen for his keys and to love his dog. And feed her, shit, she’s gonna mutiny. He’s got about two minutes to do it before his car is here, and his award for managing to get ready on time should be in the mail next week, because this is an actual fucking miracle. 

“Just gotta stop being such a fucking…” Nick slows as he spots a box on his kitchen counter, a square of yellow on top. “Silly prick”, he finishes, frowning down at it. “What the fuck.”

It’s a box of tea. With a Post-It stuck on top. Nick frowns harder. He doesn’t bloody own Post-Its. 

_What kind of man doesn’t have any proper fucking tea?_ Nick reads, in Louis’s tightly looped handwriting. _Throw that other shit out, I’ll drink this when I’m here. Probably Tuesday, if you get biscuits in. P.s. fed your dog, she likes me better than you now._

He doesn’t own Post-Its, or proper tea. According to Louis, who is apparently popping by on Tuesday. Nick stares at the note, his head a bit spinny because he’s done a shit job of breathing for the last thirty seconds. He looks down at Pig, curled back up in her bed and happy as larry, as if she can help explain this, but she’s giving nothing away. Maybe she is on Louis’s side now. 

“He’s left me a box of fucking tea,” Nick tells her. Her tail wags a little, soft thumps against her even softer bed. He’s _brought_ me tea, Nick amends in his head, and he can see a Tesco Bag for Life, rumpled up near the kettle in a manner that vaguely suggests an attempt at folding it has been made. 

Nick can sort of remember that Louis’d rocked up with that last night, then thrown it onto Nick’s kitchen counter where it slid almost to the edge. Nick’d opened his mouth to ask what that was and why Louis was bringing things to throw around Nick’s house ― he could borrow one of Pig’s toys or summat if he was feeling a little lost for mental stimulation, they were bound to be up his alley ― but before he could say a word, Louis’d snapped ‘ignore that’, and grabbed the front of Nick’s vest, and a good chunk of his chest hair too, and dragged him into his own bedroom. As far as hellos went it was...well, it was actually pretty standard for Louis. Nick hadn’t thought much of it then, or of the bag again for the entire evening, and now its contents are spread out in front of him in a weird declaration of future tea drinking plans, and the calculated stealing of his dog’s affection. 

Nick’s grinning so hard his cheeks feel a bit pinched. 

He thinks he might be about to laugh, and then he does, loud enough to get Pig’s tail wagging happily again. Nick quickly covers his mouth, maybe to stuff the sound back in. Nick’s not even sure what he’s laughing at; it’s not clever, or funny, it’s just a weird sort of gift, coupled with a mild insult. But Louis must have planned this, is the thing, gone through Nick’s cupboards, bought the tea he wanted and then the fucking sticky notes too, stayed the night and then set this up and buggered off before he’d have to explain himself. It’s a genuinely impressive display of avoidance, but it doesn’t feel dodgy. Nick thinks it might be an impressive display of something else as well, for Louis, and ― 

“Christ!” Nick grabs his phone out his pocket, which is vibrating aggressively against his arse. His car’s here, the screen is telling him, and Nick slips the tea into his cupboard. He has to turn it onto its side to fit between some coffee beans he’ll definitely drink and some dandelion tea that Harry left in there to die and which Nick absolutely will _not_ drink (it’s a fucking weed, it’s not tea Haz, sort yourself out). Nick pushes the box back a little with two fingers, right before his phone goes off again and with a last little wave and a ‘bye, love!’ to Pig, he legs it out the front. 

The door clicks shut quietly behind him. 

-

**Author's Note:**

> say hello to me on [tumblr](https://shiftylinguini.tumblr.com/) if you like xxx


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